On Mar 8, 2011, at 9:03 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Matthias Wasser
>
> Obviously cet par capital prefers higher rates of profit. But
> capitalists, both individually and collectively, presumably are at
> least somewhat risk averse. (So expected profits =! expected utility
> given uncertainty, even if utility is a monotonic function of the
> profit rate.) If greater "individual" (firm) debt and economy-wide
> financialization are associated with increased systemic risk, which
> they obviously are, they may be rational to pursue when profit rates
> appear to be trending dangerously low but not otherwise.
>
> I haven't read the whole thread - has Arrighi's thesis on cyclic
> financialization been mentioned yet?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I appreciate this; u pulls some concepts together for me.
>
> My intuitive response is that capitalism has for a long time been tending
> to monopoly, centralization or concentration of wealth. (See here:
> Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm)
> Marx puts it
> succinctly that "one capitalist kills many". The most efficient form
> of monopoly is financial monopoly , because M-M2 is more efficient
> than M-C-M2 ( in Marx's symbols) for accumulating wealth. The one
> capitalist who is killing
> many , obviously , does not care about increased risk for the "many".
> In fact, the monopolist wants that. I'd even say the monopolist wants
> systemic crises as the periods when they can make the most killings,
> or gather the most corpses of other corps. (ha ha). The monopolist
> wants systemic risks and monopoly or cutthroat competition So, in that
> way too, the ruling sector of the
> ruling class wants financialization. If the ruling sector wants
> it, it is a tendency of the system as a whole.
>
> On financialization in early capitalism:
>
>
>
> "The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive
> accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows
> barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into
> capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles
> and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in
> usury. The state creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum
> lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on
> functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But
> further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and
> from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the
> government and the nation – as also apart from the tax-farmers,
> merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every
> national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven –
> the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings
> in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to
> stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. "
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
>
> Agiotage is currency exchange. " Lazy annuitants"sound like coupon clippers.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
But the tendency throughout the most recent period, during the extraordinary growth of the FIRE sector, has been against monopolization, has it not?